I am trying to follow the Apple's recommendation to handle low-memory warnings (found in Session 416 of WWDC 2009 videos) by freeing up resources used by freeing up my dataController object (referenced in my app delegate) that contains a large number of strings for read from a plist: - (void)applicationDidReceiveMemoryWarning:(UIApplication *)application { [_dataController release]; _dataController = nil; NSLog([NSString stringWithFormat:@"applicationDidReceiveMemoryWarning bottom... retain count:%i", [_dataController retainCount]]); } But when I run ObjectAlloc within Instruments and simulate a Low-Memory Condition, I don't see a decrease in the memory used by my app even though I see the NSLog statements written out and the retain count is zero for the object. I do pass references to the app delegate around to some of the view controllers. But the code above releases the reference to the _dataController object (containing the plist data) so I would expect the memory to be freed. Any help would be appreciated.